Opened in September 2021, the Academy Museum is one of the most visited places in Los Angeles. But a controversy covers within the institution, accused of obscuring the part of European Jewish immigrants in the creation of Hollywood.
“Can you imagine a museum dedicated to Renaissance painting without the Italians?” comments Thomas Doherty, a historian specializing in Hollywood, professor at Brandeis University (Massachusetts). According to the American magazine Rolling Stone, he would not be the only one to be indignant. The cause of this anger? The brand new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, created by the Academy of Oscars, in Los Angeles. The role played by European Jewish immigrants in the creation of the Hollywood industry would simply be overlooked.
The controversy would have started to simmer even before the inauguration gala of the museum (whose building was designed by the “starchitect” Renzo Piano), on September 25, 2021. “Donors and influential members of the Academy Awards, many of whom had visited the venue for a preview, were outraged that the origin story of Hollywood – and therefore of this group of immigrant, Jewish for the most part, who had fled persecution in their home countries and created what would become a billion-dollar American empire — was conspicuous by its absence,” writing Rolling Stone.
The Jewish pioneers, conspicuously absent
No mention, or almost, of Sam Goldwyn, Marcus Loew, Carl Laemmle or even Jack Warner, the magnates who laid the foundations of the Hollywood myth. As pointed out Rolling Stone :
Jewish film pioneers are barely mentioned, with the exception of the director of ‘Sunset Boulevard’, Billy Wilder. He is entitled to a small cartouche next to one of the six Oscars he won, where one can read that he fled Nazi Germany because of his religion.
“Where are the Jews?” admits to having wondered Jonathan Greenblatt, the director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the leading organization fighting anti-Semitism in the United States, when he first visited the museum.
Miyazaki plutôt that Disney
“Why does the museum display such a polemical bias? The question remains a source of debate and astonishment, notice Rolling Stone. According to some sources, a small number of members of the academy lobbied for non-white cinema to be given prominence, to the detriment of contributions made by white people, which were deliberately minimized. This would explain, according to some people interviewed by the magazine, that Japanese animated film director Hayao Miyazaki had the honor of a temporary exhibition, rather than Walt Disney. Or that the Ethiopian filmmaker Hailé Gerima is highlighted, while a Francis Ford Coppola (descendant of Italian immigrants and raised in the Catholic faith) is absent subscribers.
“If identity was a priority in programming, Jewish identity was apparently not”, thinks he can sum up Rolling Stone.
Soon a permanent exhibition
However, Bill Kramer, the president of the museum, announces himself ready to “to correct the shot”. He announces for next year an exhibition on the founding fathers of Hollywood. Initially programmed to be temporary, this will be “the first and only permanent exhibition” proposed by the institution, specifies the publication.
Will that be enough to put an end to the controversy? Rolling Stone seems willing to believe it. In conclusion of its article, the magazine gives the floor to producer Sid Ganis, very involved in the creation of the museum. “It’s a museum that covers more than a hundred years of film history. Admittedly, we did not choose to open on the origin story, but we chose to highlight what was relevant to the audience we were addressing and which needed to be included”. he declares. Before adding:
I have friends who told me: ‘Where are the Jews?’ It’s all regarding perception. They are here, and we will see more of them very soon. We can’t miss them.”
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Established in 1967, Rolling Stone was the crucible of the new American journalism. From these columns came great feathers like Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thomson, the priest of the gonzo journalism. This rocker’s bible publishes
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